


i’ll see you again, one day in a land far away

by wanderNavi



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: All hurt no comfort, Character Death, F/M, a three-step guide to how to make the bad timeline even worse, me: I feel like writing something more lighthearted today, me: [stays up all night writing this instead], once again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 06:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30000675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: Robin and Chrom weren’t alone when they confronted Validar, narrowly averting a crisis.
Relationships: Frederick/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	i’ll see you again, one day in a land far away

When Chrom clawed awake, Lissa near immediately flew into a frenzy, poking and prodding him all over his aching body, interrogating him over and over again, “And how does this feel?”

“I feel it, normal, Lissa, come on, help me sit up,” he croaked.

With a pout she probably hadn’t even noticed, she grudgingly helped him lean against a pilfered pile of slightly lumpy pillows and shoved a cup of water his way. Thankfully, he managed to drink from it on his own with minimal spillage.

She crossed her arms and before he could begin attempting to convince her to help him out of the bed, she said, “You aren’t going anywhere until I say so, mister. You were electrocuted, you almost _died_.”

He set the glass on the tiny side table accompanying the narrow bed he laid in and said, “And I’m sure I owe you many thanks for that. I…” Chrom scrubbed a shaky hand through his hair. It felt vile. Just how long was he out? He asked, “What happened to Robin?”

Lissa glared and muttered, “Of course you’d ask that.” Louder, she replied, “Robin’s in custody right now. Or well, whatever’s possessing Robin. She’s obviously not in her right mind.”

That…damn.

Giving himself time to process that news, Chrom glanced around the room he was in. It was small, without much by way of furnishings in it beyond his bed, the tiny table, and a chest crammed into a corner. With everything squeezed in together, there was barely enough floor space for Lissa to walk around, collecting spent medical supplies and miscellaneous belongings. Midafternoon light filtered in through a dirty window. All in all, not the most glamorous location Chrom woke up in, though not the worst either.

“Where’s she being held?” Chrom asked while staring at the brick wall which was the only thing he could see through the window at this angle.

Lissa paused in shoving gauze back into a canvas bag.

With his most innocent expression, Chrom added, “I’m just curious. It’s not like I can leave this room easily, can I? And where’s Frederick?”

Once again glaring at him, Lissa said, “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re thinking. I’m not telling you. You aren’t taking a single step from that bed without my permission. And Frederick’s with her. He’s taking care of it, trust him.”

“I do trust him,” Chrom said. “But I’m worried, okay? I don’t…I don’t feel good about anything going on here. I need to see them.”

Instead of replying, his sister went back to resolutely packing her bag, not looking at him. The grin he had fixed on in an attempt to assuage her dimmed. A subtle wave of exhaustion swept through his aching body. Discomforted by her silence, Chrom asked, “What aren’t you telling me, Lissa?”

Her bag closed with a loud click of metal sliding into place against metal. Still unable to look him in the eye, Lissa said, “Everything will be fine, Chrom. Just stay here and rest. I’ll say it again, you almost died. Just…just rest up and heal.”

She didn’t run, but she rushed out the room before he could get as much as a word in edgewise. Disconcerted, Chrom leaned back into the pillows and glanced at the guards stationed outside the room’s door. He settled in, waiting for the first chance to slip out the room and track Robin and Frederick down. Watching the slanted triangle of sunlight painted across the floor and the walls, he silently implored them to not do anything rash before he could reach them.

* * *

“Frederick, dear? Where are we?”

His head snapped up at the hoarse voice, instantly yanked out of the haze of uneasy sleep with a force like he’d been tied to a great stone suddenly kicked over a cliff. Without much conscious thought, he scrambled to where Robin laid bound in chains and magical restraints. She blinked at him; she breathed laboriously.

“Back across the border into Ylisse,” Frederick told her. “It’s been… it’s been a hectic few weeks.”

“Weeks?” she repeated plaintively. Then her eyes widen and she weakly struggled against her chains, trying to sit upright to no avail. “ _Chrom_. Oh gods, Chrom, what have I—”

“He’s alive,” Frederick hastily interrupted. “He’s recovering well, we managed to intervene in time.”

There was dirt smudged against her face, where the other being, the malevolent force of rage, had snarled against Frederick’s hold and howled against the cold magic pinning it down to the ground. In the rush out of Plegia and back to safety, which they honestly only managed thanks to Validar’s death and pure luck, they made camp by the first town they found which boasted a clean bed they could lay Chrom on and a secure hold they could keep Robin in. And it was here, in the chill of a hastily emptied cellar, that Frederick held out fragile hope and remained vigil. The beast had been thoroughly ready to gut him with its claws by the end of the second week.

Seizing the rekindled flare of hope at the return of his wife, Frederick said, “Hold on, Robin. I’m going to get Miriel and Libra. Now that we know you can regain control, everything’s going to be alright.”

A slow frown pinched Robin’s brow and her concentration wavered, dull and limpid. Frederick swallowed and pushed aside the matter of her incomprehension. “Just hold on, I’ll be right back.”

“N-no.”

“I’ll be right back.” He stood and made to climb the stairs out of the dark room.

“No, Frederick, I can’t,” her voice shuddered. It seized him by his heart and tugged him back down to her side, forcing him to take in her flushed wince of pain.

Her head tilted to the side and her eyes squeezed close. A cry wrung past her clenched teeth. To his alarm, tears gathered among Robin’s lashes. “I can’t – it _hurts_ ,” she pleaded. “It hurts so much, Frederick, oh gods, I’m burning up, it feels like everything inside me is on fire.”

“I’ll only be gone for a moment, the first person I find, I’ll send to retrieve Miriel and Libra,” Frederick attempted to reassure her. He laid a hand in the patch of her right shoulder not buried under the restraints and instantly she flinched away. Frantic energy filled his lungs. “They’re here to help you, Robin.”

She shook her head, eyelids still pressed closed and sending her unwashed hair into further disarray. “It’s too much.” Pain thinned her voice. “Frederick, we completely miscalculated, it’s too much.” With visible effort Robin opened her eyes and searched blindly for him, as if she couldn’t see him despite his hovering by her side, scant inches between them, his arms aching to soothe her suffering. She was panting and she was saying, “Don’t go, Frederick. There’s barely anything left of me. I can’t – it’s – I’m never going to win control again.”

Every imperfection on the stone floor pressed against his knees.

Robin’s voice whispered, “Frederick, are you still here?”

The weight of mountains, of entire deep oceans, dug into his shoulders and against his bent spine. _Please Naga, please don’t let this be_ — he prayed. With the bonds in the way, Frederick couldn’t cradle her smaller hands in his, but he could brush his thumb, the lightest he dared to, along her wayward hair and tuck it from her face with a tremor in his hand, in his whole body. “Yes, Robin—” _please, Naga, don’t let this be how_ — “I’m still here.”

She blinked, for a moment, in silence. Before a total frantic panic could strangle him, however, Robin said, “It’s Grima.”

When Frederick came crashing onto the charred battlefield, he had barely a second to process the scene before everything went to hell with the crackle of electricity. Part of the lightning caught on his armor and the thought passed undeniably through his mind that he was going to die there and then, clinging to the volcanically enraged body of his wife possessed by something violently thrashing against him pinning it down to the ground. Wrestling it into its chains hardly endeared Frederick further.

“I don’t have much time left,” Robin said. Tears trailed from the corners of her eyes. “When I – oh, Frederick, I’m so sorry. _I’m so sorry_ , this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“We’ve had time to plan, we’ll be able to contain them. Robin, don’t apologize,” Frederick said.

Once again, she shook her head, this time knocking his hands to the side. She asked, strained and wrung out, “Are those plans able to contain a fully resurrected Fell Dragon? Because I’m burning out, love, it’s burning me out completely. And when I do, Grima will turn this town and you to ash and rust.”

Oh gods. “No,” he replied because now was as ever a time for truths. No, the containment plans he and Libra and Miriel frantically scraped together weren’t nearly enough for that magnitude. Everything had been predicated on Robin’s ability to spin her ironclad will into a tether, a leash. Willful blindness kept Frederick from considering anything else. Now he berated himself, _idiot_ , for failing Robin.

A hurt sob broke out of Robin and she turned her face into one of his numb hands. Without her customary coat, Frederick could see every one of her feverish shivers. Her eyes had drifted closed again. He knelt, bent over her, grasping for all her faint words even as they lashed his heart into a bruised and bleeding sore.

In a whisper, she asked, “Do you have your sword?”

“Robin, don’t ask this of me.”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. Her skin under his hand was aflame with unnatural heat. “Frederick, look after Morgan, okay? Make sure he knows…make sure he knows how much I love him.”

Unable to breathe, Frederick silenced her with a kiss – _please don’t let this be his last_ – and to his horror he faintly tasted iron. Robin moaned under him and her tears ran anew as he pulled a bare sliver of a degree away and begged her with their mingling breath, “Don’t ask this of me, Robin, I can’t bear it.”

“Then Chrom will die,” she said. Her jaw shook and she swallowed. With a firmer voice, she said, “Then little Lucina and everyone will die. We have our duty, Frederick. If we do not do it now, we will never have a chance to again.”

And her hands may have been immobilized and bound, but it was her skillful fingers that drew the knife and plunged it in. “Frederick, I can’t hold Grima back for more than a minute. Love, let this body die on my terms. Please don’t make our son an orphan today.”

Frederick kisses her again, as if it could give them another minute, another five. But the foul heat pressed against his hands, against his brow, against his lips, and the malevolence he grew unwillingly familiar with over the last many days was unfurling sliver by cruel sliver. And it was rising, promising to soon be more than its resentful shimmering level before.

“Frederick,” Robin begged.

Under the control of something cold, something uncompromisingly harsh, something demanding his duty, Frederick drew his hands away from the soft skin of his wife’s face and stiffly stood. Never had the scrape of a sword exiting its sheath been so loud before.

 _I’m sorry_ , he meant to say. _I’ll take care of Morgan_ , he meant to say. _Wait for me_ , he meant to say.

“I love you,” Frederick choked out, and plunged his heavy blade past her ribs and into her heart.

* * *

The spells all depended on life force to keep its captive trapped, and as the thick red spread, they flaked off and dimmed.

Without the fever, her body felt colder than ice in his arms.

His sleeves stuck against his skin.

And so consumed with the black abyss of his riptide grief, he hadn’t heard the door at the top of the stairs open. He hadn’t heard the labored footsteps making their determined way down the steps. The way a hand clenched tight upon the handrail, the other hand pressed against bandages wrapped around red branches of an electric scar.

In the abundant light, there was no hiding the dark crimson on the sword pulled out and thrown to the side.

“What did you do?”

At the foot of the stairs, Chrom shook not just from the fatigue that came with an ill-advised walk when he should had been confined to bed rest for three more days.

Involuntarily, Frederick’s head turned toward his lord. His lord, who, last Frederick checked, had been unconscious, had been in as good as a coma.

“What the _hell_ did you do?” Chrom shouted.


End file.
